In the period 1610–1642, over two thousand Londoners joined the ranks of the city’s private military companies, the most renowned being the Honourable Artillery Company. The membership was primarily bourgeois, with many of the capital’s leading merchants actively involved in training and leading the company. Using the annual Lord Mayor’s Shows as a model, this paper addresses the role public performance played in defining company members as true citizen-soldiers and able defenders of the commonwealth. I argue that these performances offer unique insight into the phenomenon of civic martialism and reveal that “moderne” military prowess strengthened the social, political and economic status of company members.
David R. Lawrence is a Fellow at the CRRS and teaches in the History Department at York University. He is the author of The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603–1645 (Brill, 2009) and a number of articles on late 16th and early 17th century English martial culture. He is currently working on a monograph exploring merchants and civic militarism in early Stuart England.
